Demand for IT skills has increased as businesses begin to re-invest in IT and professionals with particular IT skills are receiving multiple job offers and double-digit pay increases if they switch employers.

The failure of the government's £469m FireControl project has been widely condemned as a monumental waste of money, with the government now attempting to achieve interoperability and resilience between fire and rescue control rooms at a cost of £81m. Computer Weekly examines some of the legacy issues of its failure.

Early adopters of Google+ have been hit by an avalanche of e-mail notifications, due to a glitch in the system. News of the accidental spamming came as Google revealed it is working on a business-focused feature for the Google+ social networking service.

Oracle solutions specialist Inoapps has acquired fellow Oracle partner and managed services provider Teamsolve for an undisclosed sum. Inoapps, which has won a flurry of Oracle partner awards in recent years, said the growth-centric acquisition would create a company with strengths based on "co

Quest Software has used Microsoft's worldwide partner conference as the platform to launch a radical overhaul in its channel programme to simplify a disparate system that has developed over the last few years. The vendor has acquired a number of other players over the years, with ten plus in the la

In last month's feature Microscope looked at the choices in the printer market and concluded that small and medium enterprises (SME's) stood to benefit from inkjet printing where lower print volumes are experienced. Linda Endersby examines the SME market in more detail and the opportunity for inkjet

Presenting a good image is something that every business wants to do regardless of their size and balance sheet. Creating and developing a brand is an ambition that many firms have and work hard to do to establish a strong position in the marketplace. Apart from a handful of exceptions most company

Micro-P has given its backing to cloud service provider Outsourcery signing up to allow the connectivity specialist to provide its resellers with hosted services. The decision by Micro-P to become a strategic partner in the InPartnership Programme means it gets the chance to offer the latest unifie

Systemax Europe Technology Grouphas become the first Dell reseller to bag the vendor's new Networking and Security certification in EMEA. The firm, which is also moving up to the recently-created Preferred Partner level ofthe PartnerDirect programme, has successfully overcome all the challenges Dell

SMEs appear to be losing confidence with the banks with a significant number not even bothering to apply for loans despite the fact they need the funds. There are even more waiting to add to the disappointed figures with many that require loans to fulfill projects penciled in for the next quarter p

The media tablet market burned out in Q1 after experiencing the same kind of heavy seasonal downturn normally seen in more mature consumer electronics categories, according to IDC. Worldwide shipments into sales channels dropped 28% on a sequential basis to 7.2 million unitsin the three months to 31

Driven by the adoption of private as well as public cloud services, spending on datacentre IT infrastructure is set to grow to $40bn in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) by 2015, according to analyst research.

Cyber terrorism will become an increasing problem as the tools and techniques needed for cyber attacks become more widely available, according to a report on the government's new counter-terrorism strategy.

IT services provider Computacenter has said that product revenues from its more financial services-oriented customers in the UK were down 23 per cent in the first half ofits financial year, even as itrevealedits first half profitswill be "comfortably ahead" of the same period last year. Th

The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) has reacted with dismay at the findings of a European report revealing that intellectual property is being undermined by illegal downloads over the internet. Research from Envisional surveyed the top 10,000 torrents with 6,000 plus containing content tha

Cisco could be on the verge of announcing up to 10,000 redundancies, or 14 per cent of its workforce, according to reports from the US. Citing sources familiar with the plans, Bloomberg has today reported that 7,000 could go in August, and 3,000 more are likely to come in the form of early retiremen

Microsoft has urged resellers to keep the momentum going around Windows 7 pointing out it is the foundation for an upgrade path to future operating systems. The call for further sales of Windows 7 was made by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, who was banging the drum over its latest OS sales figures

Email management specialist Mimecast has used Microsoft's World Partner Conference to announce a free package of Exchange 2010 and Office 365 migration services with the intention of preventing email downtime and data loss during the process. The firm reckons it will give away close to $30m (£

Networking and comms distributor Zycko has been sold off to a management buyout spearheaded by the group's managing director as the founder of the company Rory Sweet moves on. The deal, which was struck for an undisclosed sum, not only involves the group managing director Nick Moglia but also involv

Mozilla's update to Firefox 5 for Mac users, version 5.0.1, aimed at eliminating crashes when using a downloadable font in OS X 10.7 and fixing the Java plug-in in OS X 10.5, could have security links, says Sophos.

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is responsible for key aspects of the UK's cybersecurity, has lost equipment worth up to £1m, the latest Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report reveals.

Although Microsoft's July Patch Tuesday monthly security update is relatively light, with only four updates as expected, the only critical bulletin MS11-053 should be taken seriously, according to security experts.

These days users expect to be able to use their iPads inside the business and as thousands of software vendors release applications for the iOS platform which provide data mobility and usability benefits to employees, the prospect of the iPad as a business device is becoming a forced reality.

Westcon has said its partners can now better serve multinational businesses after acquiring its first ever presence in Switzerland in the shape of Germany-headquartered security VAD entrada Kommunikations. Entrada distributes kit from Trend Micro, McAfee, Juniper and Riverbed, among others, and made

Security and event management (SIEM) specialist NitroSecurity is to target partners disillusioned with last year's acquisition of competitor ArcSight by HP as it unveils a series of partner programme enhancements in EMEA. NitroSecurity was originally conceived as a US government database project to

Microsoft has told partners that a hybrid cloud model, with customers taking a mixture of hosted and on-premise solutions, is going to be a reality for years to come as the market makes its transition to the brave new world. The vendor has been spelling out its views about cloud at its worldwide pa

Unite has again locked horns with services giant Fujitsu balloting its members over strike action following the redundancy of a union rep from the Crewe plant. The ballot of the 800 members at its Manchester site follows the departure of Alan Jenney who had worked for Fujitsu for 17 years and has,

SAP is hoping it can challenge the $1.3bn it was ordered to pay Oracle last year at the end of a case over wrongly downloading files. The two vendors took their dispute over SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary downloading Oracle files to court which ended with damages being awarded by a jury to compensate

HM Revenue & Customs CIO Phil Pavitt talks to Computer Weekly about the biggest and most challenging tasks in public sector IT. Pavitt discusses his overhaul of the department's IT; tackling spending cuts; public sector IT strategy and the role of cloud, open source and agile development - and how IT suppliers have failed government IT.

European broadband speed targets will be missed unless authorities introduce cost-saving measures and allow revenue-generating business models, according to a report from three communications company CEOs.

Resellers might well have used the Yellow Pages in the past to advertise their wares to the local business community but under plans unveiled by Yell dealers could be offered more interactive services. Yell has revealed a four year strategic plan to get more business out of the SME sector and one o

Nimans is expanding its data infrastructure division and moving to sell AV components for the first time as it looks for fresh areas of growth. The distributor is starting to sell its own infrastructure products, including cat cables, cabinets and power distribution units, under its own Titan brand

Acer has dropped down the PC shipment league table in the second quarter with its low price, high volume business model branded "no longer effective" by industry watchers Gartner. So far this year, the troubled vendor has canned its CEO and written off over $100m worth of inventory. It shi

Microsoft is improving the incentives it offers partners to encourage more to sell cloud and virtualistion. Using its worldwide partner conference as the platform to announce the changes the vendor unveiled enhanced incentives for those selling Azure and virtualistion. The extension of rewards to co

Manchester-based Cisco partner ANS Group has become the first European partner to receive Cisco's cloud infrastructure certification. The competency forms part of Cisco's Cloud Builder and Provider programme, formally announced earlier this year at the vendor's partner conference in the Statesand is

The Cabinet Office has pulled in a system integrator, Liberata, for questioning over its acquisition of a police data hub that may give it an influential position over IT projects supporting Big Society initiatives.

Learn more about the struggles large organizations face when transitioning to Agile, and how to address these issues, in SSQ contributor Matt Heusser’s interview with Agile 2011 presenter Alan Shalloway.

As Scrum grows as a software development methodology, it also has expanded to business areas including marketing, management, operations and sales. Learn more in this interview with one of Scrum's founding fathers, Jeff Sutherland.

Xerox prepared to continue with reseller acquisitions Xerox will continue buying resellers that it believes will add value to its business as it looks to get a deeper stake in the SME market. The vendor has already picked up Scotland-based Canon dealer Concept Group and Middlesex-based NewField IT t

Softcat is planning to hand outcake and beer to staff after breaking through the £200m revenue mark in its financial year, beating its own forecasts. Although the reseller hasn't broken down any other figures it has revealed that revenue has already surpassed last year's £146m, hitting &

Cisco partners have welcomed an imminent shake-up of its EMEA management team, which it isunderstoodwill include the appointment of the firm's operations director of distributed government, Richard Roberts, as its new UK and Ireland channel director. Roberts is expected to be confirmed in the role a

Security specialist Sourcefire is looking to increase the knowledge of its reseller base encouraging more to develop consultancy level skills to ensure they can deliver services to customers. The vendor has launched a programme to educate and certify those resellers that learn about its products and

HD video solutions specialist LifeSize is to sell its gear through Avnet Technology Solutions in the UK, as part of the distie's strategy to tighten its end-to-end unified comms offering. The appointment of LifeSize, which is a technologypartner ofAvnetvendorsMicrosoft and Avaya,will help partners e

Extreme Networks has announced plans tocut $20m (£12m)in costs out of its business by the end of its next financial year, and will be reducing its headcount by approximately 16 per cent, with 110 positions understood to be at risk. In a statement today Extreme said it would consolidate most of